Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-08-03
PREACHING AND EXPLOITATION.
THE RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE OF THE
FUTURE WILL BE SHORT.
WARNING TO MINISTERS AGAINST
PROLIXITY.
CHRLST'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT
THE MODEL SERMON.
DENOMINATIONS ECCLESIASTICAL.
MUMMIES.
DR.. TALMAGE's SERMON, SUNDAY, JULY "A

THE HAMPToNs, July 24.-The Rev. T
Dewitt Talmage's subject this morning
was: "Preaching, Teaching and Exhorta-
tion," and his text, Romans, xii, 7th and
8th verses-"Or ministry, let us wait on ou1
ministering; or he that teacheth, on teach
ing; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation.' -
Before the world is converted the style OF
religious discourse will have to be convert
| ed or you might as we'll go into the modern
Sedan or Gettysburg with bows and arrows
instead of rifles and bombshells and parks
of artillery, as to expect to conquer this
world for God by the old styles of exhorta-
tion and sermonology. Jonathan Edwards
preached the sermons most adapted to the
age in which he lived, but if those sermons
were preached now they would divide an
audience into two classes-those sound
asleep and those wanting to go home.
But there is a religious discourse of the
future-who will preach it have no idea,
in what part of the earth it will be born I
have no idea, in which denomination of
Christiansl it will be delivered l cannot
guess. That discourse or exhortation may
be born in the country meeting house on
the banks of the st. Lawrence, Or the Ore
gon, or the Ohio, Or the Tombigbee, or the
Alabama. The person who shall deliver it
1udy ILLS IuOluGub u6 III d CTdulS QuQ6r Liz
shadow of the Sierra Nevada, or in New
England farmhouse, or amid the rice fields
| of Southern savannas. Or this moment
there may be some young man in some of
our theological seminaries, in the junior or
middle or senior class, shaping that weapon
of power. Or there may be coming some
new baptism of the Holy Ghost on the
churches, SO that some of US who now stand
in the watch-towers of Zion, waking to a
| realization of our present inefficiency, may
preach it ourselves. That coming discourse
may not be fifty years off. And let us pray
| God that its arrival may be hastened, while
I announce to you what think will be the
chief characteristics of that discourse or ex-
hortation when it does arrive, and l want to
make the remarks of the morning appro-
pirate and suggestive to all classes of Chris
| tian workers.
! First of all, remark, that that future re-
| ligious discourse will be full of a living
| Christ in contradistinction to didacite tech
nicalities. A discourse may be full of
Christ though hardly mentioning. His
name, and a sermon may be- empty of Christ
while every sentence is repetitious of His
titles. The world wants a living Christ,
not a Christ standing at the head of a formal
system of theology, but Christ who means
pardon and sympathy and coincidence, and
brotherhood and life, and heaven. A poor
mans Christ. A rich mans Christ. An
overworkediEman's Christ. An invalid's
Christ. A farmers Christ. A merchants s
Christ. An artisans Christ. An every
mans Christ.
A symmetrical and fne- worded system of
theology is we'll enough for theological
classes, but it has no more business in a
81 hov fho ohy1in nh nf
anatomist, or a psychologist, or physician
in the sick room of a patient. The world
wants help, immediate and world uplifting,
and it will come through discourse in
which Christ shall walk right down into the
immortal soul and take everlasting posses
sion of it, filling it as full of light as is this
MONDAY armament.
The sermon of exhOrtation of the future
will not deal with men in the threadbare il
lustrations of Jesus Christ. In that coming
address there will be instances of vicariOus
suffering taken right out Of everyday life,
for there is not day sombody is not dying
for others. As the physician saving his
diphthertic patient by sacrificing his own
life; as the ship captain going down with
his vessel, while he is getting his passengers
into the life-boat; as the fireman consum-
ing in the burning building while he is tax
ing child out of fourth story window; as
in summer the strong swimmer at East
Hampton, Or Long Branch, or Cape May,
Lake George, himself perished trying to res
cue the drowning; as the newspaper boy one
summer, supporting his mother for some
years, his invalid mother, when offered by
a gentleman fifty cents to get some especial
paper, and he got it, and rushed up in his
anxiety to deliver it, and was crushed under
the wheels of the train, and lay on the grass
with only strength enough to say: ooh,
what will become of my poor sick mother,
now?'
Vicarious suffering. The world is full Of
it. An engineer said to me on locomotive
in Dakota: eve men seem to be coming to
better appreciation than we nsed to. Did
you see that account the other day of an en-
qineer who to save his passengers stuck to
his place, and when he was fonnd dead in
the locomotive, which was upside down, he
was found still smiling, his hand on the air
brake ?" And as the engineer said it to me
he put his hand on the air-brake to- illus
trate his meaning, and looked at him and
thought: ''You would be just as much of a
hero in the same crisis"
| Oh, in that religious discourse of the fu-
ture there will be living illustrations taken
out from everyday life of vicarious suffer-
illustrations that will bring to mind
the ghastlier sacrifice of Him who in the
high places Of the field, on the CROSS fought
our battles, and wept our griefs, and en-
dured our struggle and died our death.
A German sculptor made an image of
Christ, and he asked his little child two
years old who it was, and she said, "That
must be some very great man." The scuip
tor was displeased with the criticism, so he
got another block of marble, and chiseled
away on it tive or three years, and then he
brought in his little child, four or five years
of age, and he said to her, "Who do you
think that is?'' She said, "That must be
the One who took little children in his arms
and blessed them" Then the sculptor was
Esatisfed. Oh, my friends, what the world
wants is not cold Christ, not an intellec